


Debt

by Chellodello



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 'what if' fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 07:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chellodello/pseuds/Chellodello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A life for a life.<br/>Or;<br/>Annie, Marco, and a terrible could have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Debt

 

_You're fireproof, nothing breaks your heart. You're fireproof, it’s just the way you are._

* * *

_  
_

When Armin asks her why she didn’t kill him, she tells him that she doesn’t know.

Annie is lying of course. She knows exactly why she didn’t kill the blond; it’s because she had killed him. Him being Marco Bodt.

She hadn’t wanted to; she hadn’t wanted any of this really, but orders were orders, especially when failure meant her own death. It was a titan eat titan world out there, especially in her case and death was something that happened. That’s what she had to tell herself.

But Marco had never done anything wrong to her, to any of them. If anything the tall boy had been concerned for them, always making sure everyone was fine during and after training exercises, giving them the opportunity to shine rather than taking the glory he earned for himself. ‘ _What’s the point of competing against each other? We’re all on the same team really. If you succeed than I succeed.’_

How very wrong he had been.

Marco was a good man; one of those rare truly good people left in the world and in the end it did nothing to make his end any less pointless.

The bile rose in her throat when she realized that he had watched her transform, it was enough to make her want to heave what little there was left in her stomach.  He had seen and no one was allowed to know. Marco had tried to reason with her, to make the best of it; promising to help her figure out whatever was going on. That optimistic idiot thought she was the victim of some horrible circumstance, something that could be fixed. How very much like him to believe the best in her.

Marco smiled and talked up until the very end when she gouged into his side tearing through skin, muscle, and bone with the hands of a monster.

It wasn’t exactly a quick death. The heat of her titan flesh cauterized a fair amount of the wound, not her intention at all, she wasn’t that needlessly cruel, and it took minutes for him to bleed out. 4 minutes and 37 seconds exactly.

When Annie stood before him, human again with nary a scratch on her while he bled out, Marco had the gaul to look at her with pity and hurt, as if _she_ had disappointed _him_. He had no right to pity her, he knew nothing of the things she had done, will do. She should disgust him, he should be looking at her with hatred. There should be blood gurgling from the gaping hole in his mouth as he tried to beg for his life, despite not having the words.

He does none of those things. Marco Bodt uses the last of his strength to rest his remaining hand on his chest and watches her with struggling breaths.

Annie had wanted to say something: _‘I’m sorry’ ‘You have to understand’ ‘It’s your own fault’_ , **anything** , but nothing comes out. Nothing that will assuage her guilt anyways.

At her core; Annie supposes that she has always been a monster born of self-loathing. She does the cowardly thing and takes his gear only after Marco has stopped breathing all together, unable to bare such a stare from his one, still lovely hazel, still disappointed, eye.

She does her best not to think about it; but  she sees his face when she sleeps, when she looks into the funeral pyre, when she blinks. And when she is barreling through the countryside looking desperately for Eren, because orders are still orders, the memory rears its ugly head once again. 

Annie spots Jean immediately, a hard target to miss what with his unique hair and loud mouth. She could have snapped his wires and dragged him through the earth until he was a silent mess of flesh and ruptured bone. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s done it today by any means. He was good with his gear, but he wasn’t _that_ good. She could have done it.

Annie remembers that Jean had been the one who found Marco’s corpse, his best friend’s corpse, in an ironic twist of faith. It was her fault that he was out here with the scouts instead of safe within the interior as a member of the military police. It was her actions that led to his change of heart, possibly of him discovering he in fact had one in the first place.

She’s caused him enough pain for one lifetime and ignores him to continue her search.

And later when she tips back the mantle’s hood and sees Armin there, scared and angry and confused, she remembers that he, like Marco, had always been kind to her despite her outward rejection of the rest of the 104th.

It would be best to kill him; he was smart, worryingly smart. If anyone could figure out what was going on here it was him. And wasn’t that the reason she had had to get rid of Marco? Knowledge, especially in the world that they lived in, was a dangerous thing; even a little could shift the balance of everything. Armin, infinitely more than Marco, was a threat to her goals and to her life.

So why then does she quell her hand and spare him?

The look of disappointment that Marco had leveled her with as he slumped down to die flashes before her eyes and it is horrible. Jean thought that he had died alone with no one who knew him around, but he was wrong. She was there, she knew who he was, and she knew is name but pretended that she didn’t. The morose poetic  irony of it all stuck with her for days, clinging to her like a dark cloud, fueling her own self-hatred.

In this life they were all guilty of savagery; but much of the time Annie feels that she has the most blood on her hands, innocent blood, blood of the very people who included her when she didn’t want to be bothered, blood of the people who she would consider friends if she thought herself worthy of having them.

With fingers gentler than she had ever thought her titan form to be capable of Annie drops the hood back on his blond head and used his angered and telling words to guide her towards her goal. Eren. Kidnapping Eren.

Orders were still orders; but nothing had ordered the death of Armin Arlert or Jean Kirschtein so at least Annie has that. She hopes that that small bit of mercy will make the guilt she feels over everything; Wall Maria, Trost, _Marco,_ a little easier to deal with.

It doesn’t.

Nothing ever does.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a what if that popped into my head after rewatching Marco's death and the female titan arc. First time writing Annie, who I really dislike as a person but enamored by as a character. Thank you for reading!


End file.
